Guild Wars 2

is this kittening serious?

Guard: Pets will no longer guard areas that should be inaccessible to them.
Crippling Talon: Cooldown of this ability has been reduced from 18 seconds to 15 seconds.
Empathic Bond: Fixed a bug that wouldn’t apply transferred conditions to pets. This trait now transfers three conditions to the ranger’s pet every 10 seconds rather than all of them.
Hawk and Eagle now have their own unique icons instead of sharing one.
Path of Scars: This ability’s damage has been normalized between traited and non-traited versions. Damage has been increased by 85% when not traited.
Icy Screech: The White Moa activated ability now applies 3 seconds of Chill, and the skill fact has been updated appropriately.

so…rangers are even worse now in wvw.
you nerfed our grandmaster trait(one of the few worth getting)
Whopdee kittening doo, our eagles and hawks now have different icons
and we get 85% more damage on a useless weapon to begin with in the off hand. great.

StoneWolf.7930:

and we get 85% more damage on a useless weapon to begin with in the off hand. great.

I thought “buffing useless weapons” is exactly what we want, if you know what I mean

But tbh idk what to think about it. I didn’t expect any buffs, honestly. Everything I wanted from balance changes was nerf to some proffs/build that are OP. Seeing how they got buffed… no idea what to say.

I’m going to still play my ranger and it will still be my main. The day I leave ranger, will be day I leave game. I hope it will be because of other reasons than “balance issues”.

so…rangers are even worse now in wvw.

^ You said it. Guess they want everyone playing thiefs and mesmers. How can they buff those classes if anything??? So it’s okay for a thief to come demolish a Toughness/Vit/CD/power ranger in 5 seconds? Okay.

Worst balance team ever. And i tought Bioware was bad

I’m sick of waiting only to be let down time and time again. I don’t think significant ranger improvements are coming like JP said so many months ago.

Imo it’d be nice if one of them answered here. Not about “why” or “when”, but just make a post to show they are reading this – maybe not listening, but at least reading.

this thread will selfdestruct in 3…2…..

[Anet dont like naming devs!]

Seriously..85% increase and you still complain?

I think I’m actually more kitten off now than I was in October when we got nothing.

In October I still had some hope that a patch would come that I would read and think “Wow, now I could do this, or that, or use that. Ranger actually has viable options now!”

Today I just don’t have any hope left. I’m starting to honestly believe I could quit the game for 2 years and when I got back it would still be the same situation as today.

There really hasn’t been a single patch since launch that has actually changed the way the ranger works and what is good and what is worthless filler. There was the aquaman patch but let’s be honest, Speargun was already the go-to underwater weapon, it’s just a bit better now.

What I really want for the ranger is changes not minor tweaks but real substantial changes. Minor tweaks isn’t going to cut it.

When the trunk is rotten no amount of trimming the branches will save the tree.

awe extender.1908:

this thread will selfdestruct in 3…2…..

[Anet dont like naming devs!]

ANet doesn’t like “naming” anything. They don’t name buffs/nerfs/mechanic changes in advance, etc.
Any rage they receive is self-invoked on their part, and when they can’t even be adult enough to have open discussions with the community about mechanic and balance issues (and instead choose to keep everybody in the dark until the day of the patch), then when they shut down threads like this that don’t even have a flaming nature to them yet, then it just reaffirms all the rage induced opinions people have of them, which eventually leads to the loss of numbers in the player community.

Dardamaniac.1295:

Seriously..85% increase and you still complain?

This doesn’t change anything meaningful about the profession. It’s one ability almost nobody used. Yes it’s a nice change but unless this one ability is magically OP the profession is still borked as a whole.

Dardamaniac.1295:

Seriously..85% increase and you still complain?

That’s just a damage buff for a single weapon skill, doesn’t do anything overall for rangers.

All the core issues are still mostly untouched, pet pathing,ai,hitting moving targets,no aoe protection, messed up traitlines, pet stow…

You don’t fix a car with a broken engine and transmission by replacing the old wunderbaum with a new one which has been happening for months with rangers.

no actually nerfs and just a major buff…i cant see a reason to be sad for the rangers..As for the pvp community,i can sense some saddness

Dardamaniac.1295:

no actually nerfs and just a major buff…i cant see a reason to be sad for the rangers..As for the pvp community,i can sense some saddness

“major buff” lol

Dardamaniac.1295:

no actually nerfs and just a major buff…i cant see a reason to be sad for the rangers..As for the pvp community,i can sense some saddness

Let me put it this way:

The way most professions would feel about significant nerfs is how the ranger community feels when nothing changes.

For a profession that works well a nerf might break something and what used to work is now broken. People don’t like broken.

For rangers things are broken and not being fixed. If something is broken and you don’t fix it, it is still broken. People don’t like broken.

I don’t think I ever posted in this forum, but kitten, I’ll do it…
My main is a ranger, I’m not a good player, never was, never will be. I don’t invest too much time in the game(let’s say 1-3 hours every day with some more in the weekends). I regard myself as being pretty average at playing a ranger but I just can’t take it anymore.
I saw in a video(state of the game or something like that) that devs balanced the ranger with the idea with having a pet alive at any time. Great, I think it’s a good idea, but there is a problem: Why can’t our pet hit the target? It happens to me every time in WvW, my pet gets kitted by everyone just because he can’t attack while moving like we do and he has to stop every time before he attacks, loosing time in the process. To the people saying, cripple, chill, buff your pets speed… yeah… I don’t say that’s impossible to do, but really… I had like 2-3 cripple skills and all the trait that gives the pet speed and he still gets kitten a lot.
The spirits are… please… those are not skills. I was a spirit ranger during my early ages but… then changed because… you know… they are dead in 5 sec when in a fight and if you don’t trait them to move… they are even worst cause you are practically bound to play in one spot till they run out. And the casting time… really? like almost 2 sec to cast a spirit? really? what does it do? bring a bazooka to the battle?
Now I’m a full 30 points in BM, why? because it feels right, at least my cat can dish out the awesome 4-5k crits that I hear people talking about and I’m pretty sturdy and with quickening zephyr and sword I can take down a target pretty easily.
But even after 5 months I still can’t find a build that I truly like and that I feel it can be useful.
I don’t think rangers will ever be fixed though. From my point of view the class needs serious work in the area of the pet, especially the AI. And from what I see it they need to make it a lot better than it is and it will never happen now that the game is released. They are too lazy to do it right, if they weren’t, they would have done it already.
After that they can focus on the balance issues that we have with our weapons like the longbow firing at a wayyyy lower rate than the shortbow even though the damage isn’t that high to justify the low attack rate.
The greatsword has almost the same damage as the one handed sword, even though one handed sword is way faster.
Ranger seems like a mess.
It seems like people working on the class just don’t know what to do, every time they wake up, go to work then go to sleep. Then come back and and so on, then they get paid, repeat, but they don’t love the job they are doing. I don’t think anyone loves to work on the ranger class. That’s what i feel, that this class doesn’t get the love from it’s creators. It’s like they want to throw it away far away and never hear of it again.

Dardamaniac.1295:

no actually nerfs and just a major buff…i cant see a reason to be sad for the rangers..As for the pvp community,i can sense some saddness

The change to the skill is insignificant to the overall performance of the class, both within itself as well as its performance within the current metagame.

It’s like taking the limit of 1/x as x approaches infinity. No matter what the value of x is, the limit is still going to approach the same value.

The “balance change” is disappointing because all it is saying is that ranger gameplay will continue to be stagnant until another potential update, which, with the current record, will result in nothing significant again except maybe becoming better underwater or having one of our weapons autoattack speeds nerfed.

Yeah, I especially got kitten off when I saw the Guardian Spirits got their HP buffed. AND all of the Guardian buffs and weapon balancing in general.

I scroll to the Ranger.

I cried a little inside.

I use to say “Rangers will get their day. They will!” – I’m not so sure anymore.

Okay. have been positive. I have been happy. I have been enjoying my ranger.

But with the change to guard… o_0 wtf? What is the use of the skill then? Will I be completely worthless in WvW? Can I no longer be the handy pet-resser in dungeons? All the sneaky things I could do… gone.

Yeah.

This is my first negative comment on this board. But seriously… This is too much. I didn’t play for power. I played for fun. Now no more fun.

This is par for the course. The Devs are very out of touch when it comes to ranger. Pets are still utterly broken. Necros got a TON of love, and even the overpowered theif and warrior classes got significant buffs. My build got a WvW nerf for the guard skill which was our only “cool” or “special” thing we could do in WvW (while mesmer clones still get to pop up on walls). None of the other patch notes affect any ranger playing a reasonable build.

Very disappointed, looks like the Rangers in the bin.

Seems it’s all talk and no action.

It was the same with the Ranger on GW1 we got nothing.

The pet thing is obviously way too complicated to get working.

neverborne.4736:

This is par for the course. The Devs are very out of touch when it comes to ranger. Pets are still utterly broken. Necros got a TON of love, and even the overpowered theif and warrior classes got significant buffs. My build got a WvW nerf for the guard skill which was our only “cool” or “special” thing we could do in WvW (while mesmer clones still get to pop up on walls). None of the other patch notes affect any ranger playing a reasonable build.

Necro has a long list but most of it doesn’t really help. Woo heals from the minion talents went up..too bad all the minions will still be dead most of the time in any kind of tough fight against a champion or boss or in wvw if anything even glances in their general direction…the times when you’d actually NEED heals. Its unbelievable that of all the classes guardians are the only ones that get actual buffs to their summons survivability and not rangers or necros T_T

Sigh…I know we were all hoping for more. I rolled an ele to play in wvw in the meanwhile. Hardly ever obstructed…does total damage to groups of ~1500 using air #1 autoattack. Can self res, speed buffs out the wazoo, good aoe. Had 40 badges before I hit level 12. ’nuff said.

This is exactly why I said we shouldn’t expect anything…

Well, the good is, at this pace, we’ll hear about good, significant ranger changes in about another 6-12 months and hey, maybe in 2-3 years, we’ll actually be a viable class. #followyourdreams

Dam if I’m gonna pick up a GS…I’m a ranger kitten I want my bow buffs and my spirits and my pets to WORK!!! This is unacceptable, truly ridiculous now.

Willing to bet damage taken to HP ratio is lowest for Rangers, which is why they’re so stingy with the buffs. Guess we just have to resign ourselves to the fact that Ranger is a hit and run/support class and will never pose a real threat to the other classes (imo “balance” is most important in wvw/pve). I’ll stick with it as my main… but this is getting discouraging.

Busy clarifying mesmer portals so mesmers don’t get upset, clarifying a lack of updates on fixes to a class isn’t as easy though.

Lillith.5724:

Dam if I’m gonna pick up a GS…I’m a ranger kitten I want my bow buffs and my spirits and my pets to WORK!!! This is unacceptable, truly ridiculous now.

I wouldn’t bother anyway. The thing still hits like a pool noodle. I only use it in WvW so swoop can move me around faster and I get the feeling that the other GS classes are just laughing to themselves when they see me with it equipped.

they are, trust me. I do it all the time on my necro :P dem wet noodles sure are amusing

This update for rangers is kittening terrible… why? because kitten you!

Regarding the trait, in all honesty, pulling all conditions off you every 10 seconds seemed a bit…much. I think it is a fair change.

Ranger is my only 80 character and I think I will never play him again. I’ve loved playing my ranger but its becoming a joke now. Rangers have to try twice as hard as the next class in roaming, and zerg fights we have to be masterful to have the same effect other classes have.

You debuff our one and only significantly cool trait in EB.
You take away a major mechanic of ours in sending pets up or down the walls. HOW THE kitten CAN MY EAGLE NOT FLY FIFTEEN FEET UP AND HIT HIM???
You give us a boost to a single weapon skill on a weapon set that is completely counter intuitive to our major builds.
How did you decide to nerf what is already consider a joke class? I honestly want to know the process. Who at the table really stood up and said “Man those rangers and their only two viable builds are just way overpowered”?

You didn’t balance kitten. You severely weakened our most useful aspects, and boosted something we didn’t even remember had because it sucks that hard.

A true failure by Anet here, an unforgivable kittening failure. How you can even fathom nerfing ranger significantly and buffing ele/thief to be considered “balance” is beyond me.

Get a new team who’s actually played the game for five minutes.

Joey – yes but it did not destroy those conditions, it sent them to your pet. And since our pet is so important to us as a class, that is a huge trade off. What if you pop RaO and suddenly your 10 conditions get sent to your pet. You have to swap, and then no more RaO might for you (RaO buff does not carry over when you swap).

Anyway…

I am -this- close to quitting. I’ve got a rage quit thread ready to go. I’m waiting for a dev response by the end of this day….may as well start looking for a new game.

Joey.3928:

Regarding the trait, in all honesty, pulling all conditions off you every 10 seconds seemed a bit…much. I think it is a fair change.

Not when ANet acknowledged that rangers suffer from an apex predator syndrome when it comes to build viability, and then after that acknowledgement, instead of increasing factors that would significantly benefit other builds, the decrease the effectiveness of a trait that decreased the effectiveness of some of the only viable builds rangers can run.
Essentially, they just participated in the “whack-a-mole” style nerfing they claimed they were attempting to avoid, especially because nothing was increased in competitive viability in return.

jcbroe.4329:

Joey.3928:

Regarding the trait, in all honesty, pulling all conditions off you every 10 seconds seemed a bit…much. I think it is a fair change.

Not when ANet acknowledged that rangers suffer from an apex predator syndrome when it comes to build viability, and then after that acknowledgement, instead of increasing factors that would significantly benefit other builds, the decrease the effectiveness of a trait that decreased the effectiveness of some of the only viable builds rangers can run.
Essentially, they just participated in the “whack-a-mole” style nerfing they claimed they were attempting to avoid, especially because nothing was increased in competitive viability in return.

It’s basically the SB “fix” all over again.

do the devs think ranger players just happen to be more prone to complaining than other players?

Just read the patch threads on ele and guard forums, they are the strongest classes, everyone there is happy with the changes. Meanwhile, everyone on ranger forum is p’d off – do the devs think it’s us? Do they think we’re the difference??

who knows. I’m feeling sick to my stomach right now.

You’ll not see Jon Peters back in this forum. He knows he’s been found out and we can’t be fooled any more (I’m saying “fooled” to try and remain somewhat civil).

transferring conditions to your pet is not dooming your pet to death as it is the same to you. 3 conditions is still very good.

Imagine combining all conditions wiped off you every 10 seconds, get that food buff/melandru runes to make conditions shorter duration, signet of renewal, healing spring. Conditions would be no issue at all. Since this is a 30 pt trait in toughness, it will likely mean you have high armor too. Too powerful.

Rei And.5916:

I don’t think I ever posted in this forum, but kitten, I’ll do it…
… snip …

So true. I don’t think this class will be fixed ever. It’s too complicated for a simple mind to fix it. So it’s better to band aid and hope sooner or later, it will go away.

Pedra.4381:

You’ll not see Jon Peters back in this forum. He knows he’s been found out and we can’t be fooled any more (I’m saying “fooled” to try and remain somewhat civil).

I think it has more to do with the fact there’s just nothing to say.

- 6 months since launch.
- 5 months since acknowledging significant problems.
- None of the problems even remotely close to solved.

There’s just no way to explain that away. Usually I’m very forgiving of devs because I know things take time. I also understand they don’t want to ‘break’ something or make something incredibly OP. I also know there’s other professions but most of them are in pretty good shape. It wouldn’t be such a terrible idea to not worry so much about them (or hell skip them for a month like they did to rangers).

My patience is running very thin because currently it seems they aren’t even trying to fix the ranger. There really hasn’t been a patch note since launch that has made me think “At least they’re trying” other than the projectile speed (not ranger specific) and pets hitting moving targets (better but still bad).

Every patch just leaves me wondering “What the hell have they been doing for the last month(s)?”

P.S. I currently have 4 level 80s with 100% map completion and full exotics. Ranger used to be my main but I just feel bad playing it in any group setting now when I have Guardian and Mesmer as options (the other is a thief who I dislike personally).

not really, you would do kitten poor damage and lose utility slots to stop the conditions. food cannot be used in spvp, and in wvw most people running conditionbuilds use +40+condition duration consumables

Joey.3928:

transferring conditions to your pet is not dooming your pet to death as it is the same to you. 3 conditions is still very good.

Imagine combining all conditions wiped off you every 10 seconds, get that food buff/melandru runes to make conditions shorter duration, signet of renewal, healing spring. Conditions would be no issue at all. Since this is a 30 pt trait in toughness, it will likely mean you have high armor too. Too powerful.

That doesn’t change the fact that it was “whack-a-mole” balancing and that nothing was improved to provide any more versatility or viability to the class. Spirit Rangers were “too powerful” in beta as well, and now look at their position.
This is the same type of balancing that they were recorded as saying they were going to avoid, then turned around, floored the accelerator, and went right for it.

I’m not arguing that it wasn’t too powerful, I’m arguing that you can’t nerf everything rangers get that is a powerful option and then expect anything less than outrage from the community when nothing is changed to be more competitive in contrast.

A summary of the ranger section of the balance changes is that all they significantly altered for the class was making rangers less effective without making anything significantly more effective to warrant competitive viability. It was a bad decision to release this change for the rangers now, and it could have been pushed back to a point in time where rangers would have received some other beneficial changes that would open up some build diversity, which is the major complaint from the ranger community in terms of pvp (lack of build diversity).

And even in PvE it’s hard to get dungeon groups because we bring less than what other classes can bring(IE warriors being better condition/damage, necro’s doing more condition damage, mesmers adding more to group utilities, guardians being the best tanks)

I don’t really know what to say about the Guard nerf, I mean guys come on this was one of the advantages we had in Wv3 it helped keep invaders busy so they we not focused on our guys on the doors. Just thanks a whole kittening lot guys you really kittened us again!

Fletch.3572:

This class will always be kitten until they decide that the pet is no longer the class gimmick.

Nerf the unliving stupid bajeeezus out of all the pets, put the power into the ranger(the player!), and tweak some “f” skills around the dumb critter that is out. Hate it, love it, I don’t really care anymore, it’s the only way ranger will ever become interesting for me.

+1, and hey guess what? This is what the Guild Wars 1 Ranger was! Pet was an option (used a skill slot), and your character retained 100% damage.

WTB my GW1 Ranger back.

Seriously, Anet. Fix this kitten. It’s absolutely ridiculous that nothing has been done for rangers for months now. Whereas, it seems, every month the already overpowered classes get buff after buff. It’s hard not to use the same utilities/traits over and over when, guess what, they’re the only ones working and/or worth taking.

Sadly it seems the biggest detriment to the ranger class is the dev team, what a sad joke they are.

Unspecified.9142:

I think it has more to do with the fact there’s just nothing to say.

JonPeters.5630:

I do still believe ranger is the profession in most need of improvement after this patch and we will continue to make those improvements. If we could fix everything at one time we would, but the reality is there are a limited # of hours to make changes.

In the world in which I operate, when something is in the “most need of improvement”, then it gets prioritized and fixed before other less important fixes. I know that’s a weird concept. In this instance, I’ll not point out the obvious with Mr. Peters’ quoted statement but it is why I don’t think we’ll see him back.

I rarely post on here. Just wanted to say I can’t understand why rangers have been ignored like this when Arenanet themselves admitted they are the most in need of improvements. They clearly have a dedicated team working on class balance because of all the various changes we’ve seen over the months to other classes. It just doesn’t make sense.